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Gift Wrap

A California commuter train receives a colorful 10th-anniversary present.

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The state of the U.S. railroad industry is often bemoaned. Reports about the financial woes of Amtrak’s (the government-initiated, private company that operates the nation’s rail system, have become frequent newscast fodder, and its demise is often predicted. However, on a smaller, regional scale, American rail travel perseveres relatively well.

In honor of the 10th anniversary of one such successful enterprise, the San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission funded a full wrap to wrap the engine of the Altamont Commuter Express (ACE®) passenger train, which runs from Stockton to San Jose, CA. The commission hired Wrapped Graphics (Stockton), the vehicle-wrap division of D&L Graphics, to fabricate the graphic for the 15 x 82-ft. train engine. According to Larry Lawrence, Wrapped Graphics’ owner and founder, his shop won the job almost by chance.

“I have a friend who works for the Commission, and he stopped in one day with a coworker who wanted logos printed for Commission trucks. We kept talking, and they eventually asked me if I could handle the train wrap.”

The commission conducted a competition to select the ACE engine wrap's design. Laslo Sel, a graphic designer for Real Time Designs (Oakland), submitted the winning entry, which comprised vector art producing with Adobe Illustrator. Wrapped Graphics modified and scaled the artwork for printing on the shop’s Mac® using Adobe® Illustrator® CS3 and FlexiSign® Pro and a Flexi RIP. The shop fabricated the approximately 1,500-sq.-ft. graphic by producing 15 panels per side using Avery Graphics’ MPI 1005 EZ™ air-egress film and DOL 1000 glossy overlaminate, which Wrapped Graphics printed on its HP® 9000 printer.

“Scaling the design artwork to fit the train’s dimensions proved to be one of the project’s bigger challenges,” Lawrence said. “Cleaning the train to prep it for vinyl application was very time consuming, and it was difficult to maneuver the scissor lift to work around the locomotive’s hinges.”

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